An oil spill near the coast of Nigeria is likely the worst to hit those waters in a decade, a government official said Thursday, as slicks from the Royal Dutch Shell PLC spill approached the southern shoreline.

The slick from Shell's Bonga field has affected 115 miles of ocean near Nigeria's coast, Peter Idabor, who leads the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency, told The Associated Press. Idabor said officials expect the slick to reach beaches in Rivers state by Thursday afternoon

Shell, the major oil producer in Nigeria, said Wednesday the spill likely occurred as workers tried to offload oil onto a waiting tanker

The source of the leak has been plugged, Idabor said, but the spill still threatens the shoreline and wildlife. Idabor said experts from Britain were coming to help with the cleanup

Shell in recent years has said most of the spills in the delta are caused by thieves tapping into pipelines to steal crude oil, which ends up sold into the black market or cooked into a crude diesel or kerosene

bonga_oil_spill_20-dec-2011.pdf

Comment by khaled Mohamed shehab on December 22, 2011 at 7:33am

Improved approaches are needed for assessing different safety-related scenarios and the associated risk levels prior to the occurrence of a relevant incident